Free ‘divine gallery’ sample art – OldWorldGods
(9) AFRO-AMERICAN – VOODOO
One of the newest entries in my top ten, as well as a mythology that is part of an active religion – or more broadly the family of Afro-American or African diaspora religions.
While I find it fascinating, it is a mythology or mythologies of which I only have superficial knowledge – and perhaps like popular culture, I am most familiar with the Louisiana variant actually titled voodoo and the Haitian variant that is titled vodou.
For Louisiana voodoo, it is primarily the ritual or magical practices that are associated with voodoo in popular culture or ‘Hollywood voodoo’ – charms or amulets such as voodoo dolls, ‘gris gris’ bags and of course mojo. O yes – and voodoo queens, such as Marie Laveau. I also find it intriguing how early followers of voodoo as slaves disguised their traditional gods as Catholic saints in a form of subversive syncretism.
For Haitian vodou, it is the divine entities, the loa or ‘divine horsemen’ that possess their followers – particularly the distinctive trinity of Papa Legba, Erzulie, and of course Baron Samedi, not least from his cinematic incarnation in the James Bond film, Live and Let Die. Again, I find it intriguing that the loa go by many names, which represent different personalities or traits – with the two most significant being the more positive ‘Rada’ form and the darker ‘Petro’ form, the latter representing the angry dark side of the loa, usually linked to the dark side of slavery in the Afro-American historical experience.
RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)